I don't know if it's just me, or if the colds I get are getting worse. They seem to be most uncommon microbes these days in their strength and their duration in my body. The thing I worry about the most is my throat with these things, as I've had bronchitis too, too many times.

So I've been mostly confined to home, with occasional jaunts on public transportation to pick the little guy up from school, as my car is still in the shop. Gives me a bit of time to think between coughing jags and seriously runny noses...not to mention time to do some goofing around online.

Like I didn't have that before...but anyway...

I joined Facebook on a lark and on an invitation from a friend from NYC. What the hey, social media ahoy! Poke me, I'll poke you back. Send me your green patch plants, your crappy Mardi Gras gifts (yes, that is actually a Facebook category). I can most certainly chat with you, if you've got the time. And I'll tell you my current status, while I'm at it.

I should have figured out where this was going to take me when friends from high school found me on it. One fateful day, someone from my former grade school asked me if I was actually so-and-so and used my maiden name.

And I hesitated.

Yes or no? Or, in the vernacular of Facebook, accept or ignore?

You see, I don't have much fondness for my grade school days. Memories of that time are ultimately painful ones. I was teased mercilessly. Weaknesses were found when these kids, who were supposed to be fellow students, would use their words to hurt me and would invariably make me cry and lash out at them, getting me into trouble. The best advice my family could give was to ignore these children or laugh at them. I'd laugh at them and get in trouble for laughing too loudly to try to drown out their hateful words. Trying to ignore them was an exercise in futility.

The best I can say about it is I found some good kids who were not like the rest, but they were a precious few. As far as I'm concerned, I look back on it now and the best way I can see it all is that I started at the bottom and things got so much better when I grew up and out of that sorry environment.

Ultimately, I did "accept". The most I've done is to confirm the identities of kids in class pictures from long ago, chatted a little about stuff that some of us used to do outside of school, and reconnected with some of my good, good friends - my precious few friends - from that time.

I don't know what sorts of pains and hurts my teasers and bullies from that time suffered. Perhaps it was the not infrequent pain of being stuck between two divorced parents. The frustration of being a little kid in a huge world. Sibling rivalry at home.

All I know is that I and a few others in that school got the worst of it, and it seemed to go largely unchecked by the people who were supposed to be our teachers. Our parents had no clue what to do with any of it, either.

So far, through Facebook, I've encountered the good ones and those who were largely indifferent, oblivious, or just too scared to change the status quo back then.

I don't know what I'll do if one of the bullies wants to "reconnect".